i can remember sitting in pc magazine's offices more than ten years ago, gingerly examining ncr's first pen pc. it was big, and like most of the pen systems of the day, featured a somewhat dimly lit black-and-white touch screen. oh, how things have changedand how they haven't.
go corp. was one of the players in the first failed attempt at pen computing. the company built a proprietary operating system and we began to see pen pcs (as we called them then) with go's penpoint os. other pen computers used microsoft windows for pen computing. in 1991 and 1992, many pc makers were jumping into pen computing feet first, producing a number of systems: the ibm thinkpad pen pc, the nec ultralight sl/20p hybrid, the ncr 3125, and the ruggedized microslate datellite 400l, for example.

pen computing never took off though, and i think for some obvious reasons. the systems were, for the most part, too big and heavy, and some relied on 20-mhz cpus, which were simply too slow to handle the requirements of real-time digitization. additionally, color tft lcds were rare in those days and the dim, black-and-white screenslike the one on the ibm pen pc, with its 32(!) shades of grayweren't particularly compelling. then there were the prices$3,500 and upwhich slowed adoption rates to a crawl.

looking at the history of pen computing makes one wonder if having another go at it isn't pure folly. but as you've read at pcmag.com and seen elsewhere, a pen computing revolution is underwayagain. this time microsoft has taken the lead, rechristening pen computing to tablet computing, probably hoping to shift the focus from the pen back to the computer and operating system underneath. as was the case a decade ago, microsoft rolled out a flavor of windows specifically designed for the new platform, this time with the moniker microsoft windows xp tablet pc edition. and also as before, this century's major system manufacturers have lined up to produce the hardwaremore than half a dozen new tablet pcs that are, once again, a combination of full-fledged tablets and hybrid laptop/tablet pcs.

forgive me if i seem skeptical of the latest attempt at pen-based computing, but it seemed like a good idea in 1992, too.

we've been testing the newest tablet pcs in the labs for months, and i asked if i could spend time with one. i settled on a hybrid, the acer travelmate c100 (we look at the similarly equipped acer travelmate c102ti in our april, 2003 issue). i chose the system for its size, wireless connectivity, and the ability it gave me to switch back to the more traditional laptop mode if i became frustrated with the pen input.

the c100 is similar to most of the tablet pcs currently available. it uses wacom's digitizing pen and tablet technologies to add writing capability and pressure sensitivity (interestingly, 1992's tablets also used wacom technology). the pens that ship with the tablet, both the small stylus that slides into the top of the lcd panel and the two large pen replacements, should be familiar to anyone who has ever used a wacom digitizing tablet. early pen computers often wired their pens to the screen or pc. but even if wires are no longer necessary with today's wacom pens and lcd digitizing panels, offering an optional tether might be wisethe unit i borrowed from the labs had already lost its smaller pen.

truth be told, i did have an ulterior motive for wanting to try out a tablet. i've been drawing on personal computers for almost as long as i've been using them; first with a mouse and then, in the mid 90s, using a wacom tablet. drawing with a tablet is a learned skill. you draw with the system on your lap or on a desk, but you almost never look at the tablet; you watch the screen, instead. tablet pcs promised the ability to draw directly on the screen with all the functions and pressure sensitivity built into regular wacom tablets.

acer's method for switching between laptop and tablet styles did not impress me at first. you press locks on both sides of the panel to either release the screen so you can swivel itin one direction onlyor to lock it. if you've swiveled the screen, you then fold it back down on top of the keyboard to relock it. i feared that the design would lead to alarmingly frequent breakage. but after going through the process a dozen or so times, i got used to itexcept for remembering which way to swivel the screen.

as a laptop, the 900-mhz, 128mb c100 is pretty good. the 802.11b wireless connectivity is strong and intelligent: i had no trouble connecting to my office and home wireless networks. battery life is, at roughly 3 hours 30 minutes, good.

i wanted real-life experience, so i was determined to perform as many tasks as possible in tablet mode. to use any of these systems, you need to learn how and when to use the tablet pc input panel, part of the tablet pc os. as with the old pen edition of windows, there is a virtual keyboard on one tab. the other tab is writing pad, which you use to enter text and notations that you then transfer to whatever text-based application you're using.

my handwriting is abysmal, but writing pad did a yeomen-like job of interpreting my scrawl, and the results were good enough for e-mail, note-taking, and creating many of the document i need, but not for entering user ids and passwords or for documents where text verity is critical. writing pad employs heuristics to help it figure out what you intended to write. when i wrote characters quickly, the app seemed to have an easier time interpreting them. the story was different though, when i tried to correct, say, an errant capital letter in the middle of a word. writing pad would sometimes throw in extra letters or completely misinterpret the one character i was writing, so i would have to erase the whole word (using the electronic keyboard) and try again.

i spent many evenings in the den using the c100. the pen flowed smoothly over the tablet and there was never any lag between writing and the text appearing on the screen. i decided to try my hand at sketching.

the tablet pc os does not ship with a native drawing app i consider worthy of a tablet pc's capabilities, so i resorted to using the blank template in windows journal. journal is the new app microsoft ships with the tablet pc os. it's an excellent tool for note-taking and marking up or highlighting documents from other applications. it actually uses bezier curves though, so text in documents you import becomes image captures. journal stores images in a proprietary format and offers only two export file formatstiff and mhtml.

journal is a rudimentary drawing tool at best, but it reproduces drawing gestures and pressure with impressive aplomb, and i found myself making sketch after sketch. still, it doesn't offer layering, and the color palette is very limited. sadly, other drawing apps (like macromedia freehand 10 and adobe photoshop 7.0) seemed unable to support pressure sensitivity natively, so drawing with those tools on the tablet was a less than satisfactory experience.

microsoft offers a few sample tablet-ready applications on its web site, including alias sketchbook. the trial edition supported pressure sensitivity, but it's a bitmap application that can't replicate the fluid drawing style possible with journal. i also fiddled around with the corel grafigo drawing and collaboration tool, which is free via download. it does recognize pressure sensitivity, but has few tools or optionsthere are different color pens, but you can't select pen thickness. what it does offer because i was though, is the ability to export to a number of file formats, including jpeg.

over the course of a few weeks, i got to the point were i could write short e-mails on the c100 without resorting to the keyboard, and i loved the tablet for web surfing. pc magazine editor-in-chief michael j. miller has been using a tablet pc for monthsthe toshiba portégé 3500. he rarely uses it in tablet form in the office, but he told me he's always using it on the train in tablet portrait mode to read and mark up documents. either way, the toshiba keyboard seems somewhat better designed than the c100's, which curves away from me and features a glidepad with an edge that's actually a tad higher than the space bar. as a result, i often hit that edge instead of the space bar while typing.

i had a couple of other issues with the c100 that may be endemic in tablet pcs. i leave the c100 plugged in for most of the day and it gets incredibly hot. i hear this complaint from other tablet users. essentially, the form factors still need to be worked out. and after using the c100 for an hour or more, my left hand (i draw with my right) begins to ache. this is because i have to support the tablet pc at roughly a 45-degree angle. that angle is necessary because the transparent digitizing layer that must be added to the screens makes these tablets harder to view at angles. in fact, the screen is just plain hard to view in rooms with overhead fluorescent lighting.

i also think that for users to become truly comfortable carrying these 3- to 5-pound systems around in the crooks of their arms, the things need some type of rubberized padding and a somewhat more lima-bean-like shape. i recommend a slight convex curve where a users palm would rest when holding the tablet and maybe some extra padding around the other side (that might rest against the crook of your arm) and bottom edge, which in portrait mode ends up resting against the body. i'm aware that these shapes could be awkward and problematic in laptop mode, but maybe the cushions could be slipped on and off for different modes. tablet pc manufacturers could also all take a page from the ibook and add retractable handles.

can tablet pcs avoid the fate of go corp. and pen-based computing? i think so. the technology is so much more polished and the capability to easily convert from notebook to tablet is an excellent innovation that's sure to get even better in future iterations. moreover, tablet pcs may gather some steam when microsoft releases its onenote application in the spring. it's equipped to collect sound, images, and video, and it's also a strong, free-form note-taking application that offers many more organizational tools than windows journal. ironically, although microsoft seems to be carefully avoiding reminding us about the past, the name of the pen utilitynote-itthat was part of the old pen computing os sounds awfully familiar.

still, i think unless they get a lot cheaper, tablet pcs will do best in niche markets, and when artists discover them, explode in the design industry.

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About the Author

A 25-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance Ulanoff is the former Editor in Chief of PCMag.com.
Lance Ulanoff has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases, "on line" meant "waiting" and CPU speeds were measured in single-digit megahertz. He's traveled the globe to report on a vast array of consumer and business... See Full Bio

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